W8: Final Project Details

Group name: from Chinese Architecture Group to Poet Su Shi Life Group

Group members: Zhihan Yang, Yixin Song, Songyan Zhao

Links to our own blog posts:

• Zhihan: http://medhieval.com/classes/hh2020/week-9-project-preparation/w8-zhihans-contribution/
• Songyan: http://medhieval.com/classes/hh2020/uncategorized/the-life-of-chinese-poet-sushi-silas-zhaos-contribution/
• Yixin: http://medhieval.com/classes/hh2020/week-9-project-preparation/w8-progress-updates/

Project details

• Important note:
  • After talking to Austin, we felt like our project was missing “a strong narrative, storytelling element” as mentioned by the final project requirements. Therefore, we’ve changed our focus from reviving ancient Chinese buildings to the life stories of a famous Chinese poet Su Shi. During the course of Su Shi’s life, he dwelled in many cities and had an adventurous life. In this project, we’ll incorportate his storyline with an interactive map. In addition, we’ll use SketchUp to model buildings in the cities in which he dwelled to highlight the uniqueness of each of these cities and how they influenced his poems.
• Progress
  • What have you done so far, who have you talked to, what have you gathered, and what have you built?
    • Zhihan Yang: Looking for appropriate images of building and model them in SketchUp
    • Yixin Song: Research Su Shi’s life stories and send them to Songyan Zhao
    • Songyan Zhao: Construct interactive map with ArcGIS, set up Reclaim Hosting site
• Problems (and proposed solutions)
  • The following questions are discussed in detail under “Important note” (see top of this blog).
    • What issues have you run into?
    • Have they forced you to change your initial plan?
    • Do you have a proposed solution or do you need help formulating one?
• Tools and techniques
  • What applications/languages/frameworks have you selected and how are you going to implement them?
    • We chose to use two intuitive tools introduced in this course: SketchUp and interactive maps.
      • SketchUp:
        • We first look at a single photo of a building that we want to model and then recreate its basic structure in SketchUp. The reason why we chose SketchUp models over plain photos is that 1) SketchUp models allow for 3D views and walkthroughs and 2) can be easily embedded in our site.
      • Interactive map with ArcGIS:
        • The reason why we chose an interactive map over a static map is that an interactive map allows us to incorporate more information. For example, when you click on a city on our interactive map, that city will be automatically zoomed in and Su Shi’s story in that city is shown.
      • We thought about using more complicated tools such as photogrammetry but they are too complicated both for us and for people who would like reproduce our work.
• Deliverables
  • An updated timeline of deliverables
    • By Week 9 Wednesday, the interactive map and SketchUp buildings will be completed.
  • Is you project still on track?
    • Yes.
• References:
  • Su Shi’s life trajectory: http://gis.rchss.sinica.edu.tw/bsgis
  • ArcGIS’s storymaps service: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/